1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to housings and devices for disk drives.
2. Discussion of Related Art
During manufacture of disk drive units, it is necessary to test the disk drive units to ensure that they meet the required specification. For example, the magnetic recording surfaces of the disks are tested for defects and the electronics of the disk drive are also tested. As part of the testing operation, the temperature of the disk drive unit is varied across a wide range to ensure that the performance of the disk drive over that temperature range is satisfactory.
For this purpose, the disk drive units are mounted in apparatus that meets certain requirements. For example, the apparatus has to be capable of controllably varying the temperature of the disk drives. The disk drives are preferably mounted in such a way as to damp vibrations, both to damp vibrations coming into the disk drive from the apparatus and to damp vibrations arising from operation of the disk drive passing out to the rest of the apparatus.
In, our WO-A-01/41148, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, there is disclosed a disk drive unit carrier. The carrier has a rear section and a front section. A disk drive is mounted in the front section for testing. The rear section contains a fan and valve arrangement for blowing air across the disk drive. The carrier is mounted with many other such carriers in a large frame-like apparatus. Through selective operation of the fan and the valve, the temperature of the disk drive can be controllably varied over a wide range. For this purpose, a heat exchanger is provided to cool the air and a heater is provided to heat the air as desired.
Typically during the test procedure, in a first step a simple power and control connection to the disk drive is made via the apparatus and so-called environment testing is carried out in which the drives carry out a so-called self-test. This first step can be used for example to test the surface of the disk for defects and to ensure that operation over a wide temperature range is satisfactory. Historically, the disk drive has then been moved to a completely separate apparatus in which so-called interface testing is carried out. In interface testing, a full control connection is made to the disk drive, in order for example to check fully that high speed data transfer through the drive's interface can be carried out with satisfactory performance. Thus, historically, there have been two separate testing apparatus, one to carry out the more straightforward environment testing and the other to carry out the more demanding interface testing. As will be understood, having to transfer the disk drives between two apparatus during testing is inconvenient and time-consuming.
The temperature of the disk drive has historically been monitored only indirectly by measuring the temperature of the air flowing across the disk drive and calculating the temperature of the disk drive using look-up tables or the like. However, this requires a high speed and high volume air flow across the disk drive in order to achieve any accuracy. This in turn means that physically large, high power fans are required, which is inconsistent with a need to minimise the size of the apparatus and makes it more difficult to minimise the effect of vibrations arising in the apparatus.
Many of the issues discussed above, e.g. damping of vibrations of the disk drive and control of its temperature, are also relevant to end user storage applications in which one or many disk drives are mounted in storage apparatus for use by end users.